Fiber-optic broadband is the latest thing in the technological world. We see it advertised everywhere, from billboards to cinema commercials, but rarely will these adverts give us any real insight into why it is beneficial beyond the fact that it sounds pretty cool and will allow us to browse the net more quickly.

Indian economy has seen tremendous growth in IT and ITES sector, and much of it can be attributed to the emergence of domestic market. So what are the development enablers that build the sector and the opportunities around it?

Bharti Airtel has introduced high speed broadband internet plans for tier-1 and tier-2 cities in India. The best part about these new plans is that they cost less, have high data download limits and have minimum data speeds of 2mbps in Tier-1 and 1mbps in Tier-2 cities.

Meru Cabs has partnered with MTS Telecom to provide free internet services to all travellers using it’s cab services. As of now the service has been launched only in New Delhi and Mumbai. However Meru Cabs plans to launch this in other major cities soon – Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The 3G rollout to various parts of India has gradually begun and users all over India can now finally start experiencing fast mobile Internet speeds via 3G. Airtel has announced it’s plans of launching 3G service for it’s users in less than a week and Tata DOCOMO, after jumping onto the 3G Bandwagon quite early, has now unveiled it’s 3G services in yet another Indian state – Karnataka.

To boost broadband penetration in the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has suggested rolling out an optical fibre cable network across the country at a whopping cost of Rs 60,000 crore.

In order to make broadband internet available to millions of subscribers, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has suggested that BSNL’s last-mile copper lines could be unbundled to private operators. This will also bring additional revenue for BSNL and make broadband internet available to people where BSNL is not able to reach currently.

Bharti Airtel India is offering free upgrades to a 2MPBS connection to enjoy the IPL frenzy. The upgrade is available specifically for youtube.com/ipl for Airtel Broadband customers so that they can enjoy live cricketing action from IPL 2010